


Something Ben said/Guess what he talked about

by exitpursuedbyabear



Category: Lovely Little Losers, Nothing Much to Do
Genre: F/M, Gendered slurs//, Pedro is everyone's favourite agony uncle, Swearing//, Two Shot, Underage drinking//, also, if you're American I guess, nothing too bad though
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-02-11
Updated: 2016-02-11
Packaged: 2018-05-19 17:23:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,990
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5975332
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/exitpursuedbyabear/pseuds/exitpursuedbyabear
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"The other day, I was hanging out with Beatrice - for six hours she was going on about something Ben said. And then that night  I was hanging out with Ben... GUESS what he talked about?" Pedro is so done with his friends.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Something Ben said/Guess what he talked about

“…for _six hours_ , she was going on about something Ben said.”

* * *

 

“But that’s all sorted now...”  
“Yes, everything’s sorted – viewers, Pedro is not a bad guy… we’re just friends, and there is no confusion anywhere.”

And with a decisive tilt of her chin, Beatrice resolved, as far as she was concerned, the most important points of the video. Pedro saw her turn and nod to him to make sure he was happy with the take, to which, well what could he do except nod back? At this confirmation, Beatrice leaned forward off the bed to turn the camera off, then got up and walked across the room to replace it in its designated (random) spot on Hero’s otherwise immaculately tidy desk. Pedro noted that you could always tell what stuff in Hero’s room belonged to Beatrice as much as it did to her, because for all her many good points; if Pedro or anybody else tried to claim that Beatrice was a naturally tidy person they would be lying.

Clearly satisfied with the content of the video – they had filmed it in one take, more or less – Beatrice took out a couple of bags of chocolate buttons from a drawer under the desk, and chucked one of them to Pedro. He caught it one-handed, holding it up in the air for a second like it was a cricket ball he’d just caught someone out with, making Beatrice snort and roll her eyes as she sat down on the bed.  
“You sure you’re ok with me uploading… all of that, Pedro?”  
Pedro shrugged with half-hearted amusement.  
“Oh yeah nah go for it, full disclosure and all that! Anyway, it’s hilarious, you’ll get more likes that way.”  
“Yeah, well, if you’re sure…” Pedro guessed that Bea was still feeling a bit guilty about her earlier reaction.  
“Can’t have weird rumours flying around after everything that people thought happened at the party, right? It’ll help.”

Beatrice paused as she considered this.  
“Yeah OK. I’ll just… tidy up a couple of… long pauses and stuff then. And anyway, if it hadn’t been for the Dickhead over on the other channel, everyone could just have enjoyed the great party you put on and none of this shit would have been a problem.” Pedro went to say something, but Beatrice hadn’t finished. “D’you know what he said, back on Saturday?”

 _Here we go_ , thought Pedro.

“So I was just talking to Susan during the party, and he came and sat down on the other side of her, you know, making up to her the way he does with girls, and I didn’t, like, notice or realise it was him, because, you know, he was wearing that stupid fucking batman costume, so by this point, given we were at a social event with free food and alcohol, I had figured, ‘Hey, Benedick’s got to be here somewhere’ but I hadn’t seen him anywhere and that seemed weird, I guess, so I just asked Susan something like “Has anybody seen Benedick anywhere?’ – I dunno exactly, I think Ursula filmed it or something – And get this; he cuts in _,_ like ‘Who’s Benedick?’!”

Well, Pedro had wondered what kind of snark Ben had perpetrated at the party for Beatrice to have said something which had got him as worked up as he had been. Beatrice, meanwhile, was still talking.  
“…thought I still wouldn’t recognise him at that point, it wasn’t like he was fooling anyone with his shitty batman voice! I don’t even know what he was trying to achieve, I mean, did he think he’d get a different opinion of himself if I thought he was someone else or…? So anyway I thought ‘fuck it, let’s just see how long he can keep this up, and I’ll just show him what I would have told someone else if they’d actually asked me that question’.”

Pedro snorted, “Which was?”  
Beatrice, for some reason, looked a little uncomfortable.  
“Oh, I dunno, the works – Urs’s probably still got the footage, maybe she’ll put it in her film project video like she did with the… thing about the mango.” Pedro thought that Beatrice sounded almost a little bitter, which was weird. _Why would Beatrice be pissed about Ursula putting up that video? I mean, she_ won _that argument!_ He pondered, as Bea continued “But yeah like. He got… just super defensive and he started going on about that Godawful bird video which… come on, how did he think that was gonna redeem him? That vlog is _the_ main reason why I don’t watch his videos any more! And then, _still_ acting like he was someone I didn’t know, he said someone had told him that I was, like, really up myself and that I probably got all my comebacks out of a 90s jokebook, and that he hadn’t wanted to believe them but now he could see what they meant; and I was like ‘what?’ so then I said ‘Oh, so you have met Benedick then? It must have been him that said that. He’s probably just defending his title, everyone only puts up with _him_ because he makes bullshit jokes anyway, and because he’s basically Pedro’s bitch.’”  
“Wow, man.” Pedro knew this bit, but Beatrice didn’t need to know that.  
“Yeah, I mean I guess that might have been a little harsh, but I mean. He had it coming – He was just being really immature, and you know that’s… not the worst of it…”

Pedro realised what Beatrice was referring to, and immediately began to feel a bit sorry for her, even despite the rejection and the basically unsolicited destruction of Ben’s usually healthy ego. Beatrice was usually pretty infallible in her good spirits; he wasn’t sure in all the years he’d known her that he’d ever seen her cry; though Hero had once told him that there had been a brief period before Bea’s fifteenth birthday, while she was up staying in Auckland, sharing Hero’s room because her parents were sleeping in the one which was Beatrice’s now, when Hero had often heard her crying in her sleep - but when asked the next morning Beatrice had claimed to have had no recollection of this, denied it strongly, and was more cheerful and ruder than ever in the daytime. Pedro still occasionally wondered whether there had been a particular reason for this. Hero hadn’t mentioned it at all the next time Bea came to visit, and indeed Bea had seemed perfectly happy at the time, perhaps a bit more sarcastic than the preceding summer, perhaps a bit more aloof with Ben, but nothing had seemed out-of-place or unusual. They had always been a little loud-mouthed and snarky around each other, and the only thing Pedro had noticed back then was that they no longer went around each other’s houses to marathon Doctor Who or argue about whatever Marlowe play Ben had been reading, or whatever it was underage intellectual overachievers did in their spare time.

“Yeah, well, on a point of information, as they say, if you… don’t mind my asking, I know Ben retreated to the bathroom to sulk at that point, because he made a ranty video while he was in there, but then the next I saw of either of you I was just talking to you and then he turned up and pretty much did a comedy double-take at the sight of you, I turn my back for thirty seconds to get another drink and when I come back, _he’s_ disappeared back to the bathroom and _you_ are really fucking pissed off, and… I never even found out why! So, can I just… look, what the hell did he _say_ to you, Bea, what _happened_ with all that there?”

This was a question which Pedro would live to regret asking. Beatrice took a deep breath (which for anyone who knew her was like the verbal equivalent of hearing someone crack their knuckles in a dark alley) and launched in to an explanation.  
“ _Well…”_ she began “I was just fucking getting to that, wasn’t I?”

_It had been getting on for midnight, and everyone had had a few drinks. Bea and Pedro had been merrily chatting away for a good ten minutes, while simultaneously keeping an eye on both Meg, who was proving to the world how much she didn’t care about Robbie by dancing with anything that moved and drinking anything that didn’t; and Claudio, who was just in a bad mood for some reason – sometimes the kid was like that. They had just touched on the subject of Hero and Claudio’s very obvious mutual crushes, and how Hero had been gushing about Claudio when Pedro had mentioned him earlier - when Benedick had emerged from the bathroom, still in the batman costume but missing the mask, so there was no chance of anyone mistaking his identity now. He had clearly meant to talk to at least one of them about something, but apparently had not been expecting to find the other as well. Beatrice was still not sure who of the two of them he’d actually been looking for. Pedro, evidently seeing the determined look in Benedick’s eye and not liking his chances with it, had made an excuse to beat a hasty retreat by fetching more drinks. At that, Benedick had acted weirdly enthusiastic, loudly exclaiming “I’ll help!” but Pedro had shouted him down and he had been left alone with Beatrice._

_Beatrice guessed that the fight had officially begun when Benedick had very audibly muttered “Just my bloody luck.” Beatrice, unable to pass up on a good opportunity when she saw one, had countered with “What, Benedick, Pedro not letting you help him with everything? Don’t worry, I’m sure he’ll deign to let you do his English homework for him when the party’s over.” She had recoiled slightly when she had seen the ugly look on his face. Clearly someone couldn’t take a joke. She had waited calmly for his predictably sub-par response to arrive so she could roast him properly, and had been, she now reflected bitterly, pretty fucking surprised. The comeback, when it came, had been anything but subpar._  
“I would rather do Pedro’s English homework for the rest of his life, make all the bullshit jokes he liked, help him find any number of drinks even from the furthest corners of the Earth, rather than have to hold another word’s conversation with you, you unassailable, soulless, two-faced vixen of a harpy.”  
And with that, he had stormed back off to the bathroom.

“Shit.” Commented Pedro, finally.  
“Yup. Talk about touché, right?”  
“I mean, I knew he’d got upset, he was still ranting when I found him again like an hour later, but I guess he was more pissed than either of us realised.”  
Beatrice snorted. “Pissed like angry, or pissed like drunk?”  
“Fucking both, man… just… both. I mean no wonder you weren’t happy with him; that was just rude. I think ‘harpy’ must be his word for the week, I’m pretty sure he used it again when he was talking at me as well.”  
“How d’you know when someone’s been studying renaissance theatre too long, I guess.”  
There was another pause. “It must be another Brit thing, I think sometimes he forgets he doesn’t live in sixteenth-century Europe haha.” She laughed humourlessly, and proceeded to continue ranting about Ben and his weirdass ways for the next three hours, until Hero returned from her date to tell them that a) dinner was ready and b) she sort of needed her room back, by which time Pedro found himself almost grateful for Hero and Claudio’s return, however gross the two of them were capable of being.

Over dinner, Pedro continued to contemplate how sick he was getting of his best friends and their non-stop, ridiculous power struggle, and mentally began to hatch a plan which he hoped would make life easier for everyone involved.

**Author's Note:**

> I suddenly remembered when Pedro said in Makeup Bloopers about having to listen to them both ranting about each other, and I thought I would fic it. Thanks for reading! Kudos/comments are much appreciated! Chapter 2 will be up at some point, feat. What Ben Talked About.


End file.
